String Theory Media

jazz guitar meets steampunk

Pat Metheny has been one of my favorite musicians since I was a kid. Yeah, I've heard him ridiculed by some jazz snobs as too pretty or lightweight. But they need to get a life. He's a visionary who has cultivated a sonic universe that's coherent yet infinite. His guitar timbres are pure silver and gold, and he was a pioneer in integrating synthesizers into jazz in a way that sounded organic and inviting. 

One doesn't expect mature musicians (he's been famous now for 30 years) to try the kinds of wild new things that make your eyes and ears pop, but yes, he has. Metheny's new project Orchestrion places his familiar guitar inside a large orchestra of robotic instruments that have been sequenced by Metheny himself into a crazy one-man-band with piano, extensive percussion, marimbas and more. It resembles the pre-digital computing machines dreamed up by steam-punk novelists. In the video below, Pat describes how his fascination as a kid with a grandparent's player piano led him toward this extraordinary concept. Not only does the music sound good, it seems like a fantastic invitation into new ways of appreciating composed music and improvised jazz. Folks, show this to your kids and see if you get a reaction.

new work: nashville symphony previews for 2010-11

We produced these preview pieces, which went up on the Nashville Symphony's site on Sunday. There are some great shows here. 

 Here's the classical season preview:

 

Nashville Symphony's 2010-11 Classical Series Preview from String Theory Media on Vimeo.

And the pops:

 

Nashville Symphony's 2010-11 Pops Series Preview from String Theory Media on Vimeo.

ramblin' guys talk music and tech

via www.nashvillefeed.com

I was a guest on my friend Dave Beronja's music and technology podcast the Nashville Feed this week. In fact it was an all buddies show, with Belmont media instructor Lucas Hendrickson and visionary curmudgeon writer/entrepreneur Paul Schatzkin rounding out our brain trust. We get together to talk about these things all the time. David had the initiative to Skype us together to do so in a public forum. You are invited to listen as we talk about key moments in music of the last decade.

both kinds of compression on npr

via www.npr.org

You can count on NPR to drop a cool bomb on the last day of the decade. In a long piece called "The Loudness Wars: Why Music Sounds Worse," Robert Siegel interviews mastering engineer Bob Ludwig about AUDIO compression, which is crushing dynamics out of recorded music by making it louder. Then he talks to Dr. Andrew Oxenham about DIGITAL compression, which makes computer music files smaller by throwing out data deemed to make "inaudible" sound.

Until recently, these related issues were treated as the exotic terrain of audio geeks, but people are catching on that it's a rich story about nothing less than how we use - and abuse - our ears. 

Unfortunately, I was troubled by Dr. Oxenham's answer at the very end of the story that we don't lose anything when we shrink wrap full-resolution digital music as an mp3. He says:

"Under proper listening conditions — if it's really indistinguishable from the CD as far as your ear is concerned — then you really haven't lost anything perceptually."

I can't square this with anything I've learned about perception.